Monday, September 05, 2005

Cousin's Wedding

What a hectic life this few weeks… and I hope I can get a rest this week before the second PMR trial. Just finish the sports last Friday (end up with no. 5 overall). Actually I’m quite disappointed with this achievement because I know we can get better than this although we don’t have any STAR like other schools. But, nevermindlah since 5-6 of them will represent the division for the state level end of this month in Samarahan.

Just a few pictures for your eyes….The sports held in Kompleks Sukan Bintangor. 40 km from Pakan.

Some of the medals

This boy doesn't know I took his pic.. hehehe...

Saturday evening we went to Begumbang for my cousin wedding. Hm… I did post the same topic in my Iban version.

We can call this event as Ngambi Indu which means the guy will go to his future wife’s longhouse together with his family members and the tuai rumah (the longhouse leader) to ask the permission from his future wife’s father to bring back his daughter. This is the important thing la in Iban’s traditional wedding. If the girl’s father didn’t agree, the guy will return back with empty hand… hehehe…. But if they agree, there will be a whole nite party… trust me… you wont sleep the whole nite and you can’t hide anywhere.

This is the story of my cousin’s wedding… Feel sad to say he’s 2 years younger than me and his wife is 19 years old. (What am I doing when I was 19?)

Okay..okay… the journey from Sarikei to Begumbang, Ulu Layar is about one and half hours.The road condition... i felt like went back to Pakan.

Finally....

As we arrived there, the girl’s family welcome us with joyful faces and we (especially my eldest aunt was surprised with the longest rubber we ever seen, so the sakai).

Then we entered the girl’s house and they served us with a lot of food. After we finished the food at the kitchen then they asked us to sit at the ruai where all the longhouse people will bring their food for us because they kesian looking at our hungry faces. This is the longhouse culture and had been practicing from generation to generation.At the girl's houseThe kuih taste nice but so liat like selipar.

After we finished the longhouse folks food, we relaxed for a while and let the digestive system do his job. Before dark we took our bath at Batang Layar but sad to say, there’s no pictures because when we reached the river, its dark already and I can’t took any pictures as they said… MANDI CEPAT! I think I took my bath less then 5 minutes.

Before 8pm we had our dinner with a different family. Well, just make it simple…let say, the longhouse has 15 families and they has 30 visitors so each family will bring 2 visitors to eat with them. If they have 3000 visitors, you calculate it yourself la….

Next, the ceremony was about to start… First, the longhouse leader from the girl side will asked the leader from the boy side...In Iban, it called beterang. Although they know it already but they had to pretend that they don’t know anything. The representative from the boy will explain either with the straight to the point words or indirectly (sound like poems). The conversation is something like this la… but they used special words… more polite till I can’t understand.A: Why are you people coming here?B: We want to take (girl’s name) to marry (boy’s name)Actually the conversation will take at least 30 minutes but as I said just now, I can’t really understand the words been used but I know the main point. Hehehe…

Later, both of them (boy and girl side) will pay some amount to the longhouse folks. I forgot the reason but the amount doesn’t cost them much. The boy pay RM6.00 to the girl’s longhouse and the girls pay RM7.00 to the boy’s longhouse. RM50.00 is for the penalty (dunno the suitable word), only paid if they divorced and this not suppose to happen. If the husband leaves the wife, he will pay RM50.00 and the other way round.

After both side agree with everything… then the Melah Pinang ceremony started. The bride and groom walked along the longhouse three times with some folks who played the taboh (Iban’s traditional music).

Next, both of them sat on the tawak (Iban’s traditional music instrument).

Then… I don’t know what was happen because I felt very sleepy and I slept. Luckily lil sis took some pictures for me to post on my blog. Thanx to her.Melah Pinang conducted by the groom's grandfather.

They had their supper without me... hish...

Next, the party began. They (old, young, married, unmarried, boys and girls) danced through out the nite… and we stop around 6:30 in the morning. I joined the party around 1am because some guys forced me to dance with them… ehem… (sorethroat…hehehe…) Frankly speaking, I’m not really familiar with this type of function but with this type of culture, we need to respect and please them.They enjoyed the dancing time with the most popular Iban's song, Kerimpak Kaca Lauya @ Lousy Broken Glass - direct translation

Hehehe... that girl was force to dance.

At 7 am we left the longhouse and brought my new sis in law back home. 8:35 am we reached home… took bath and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz………………….